...Suppose you had the socialistic state now--to-morrow, what
would you do with all these--lady-birds?"
"I'd put 'em in a sanatorium until they got their nerves patched up, and
then I'd turn 'em over to a trainer who'd put them into a normal physical
condition; and then I'd put 'em at hard labor--every last one of 'em."
"Oh, dear, Mr. Kirkpatrick, would you?"
"Yes," he said grimly. "It 'ud be their turn."
CHAPTER XI
I
She walked down the avenue with him, listening to his angry account of the
great coal strike in West Virginia, where the families of miners in their
beds had been fired on from armored motor cars, and both strikers and
civilians were armed to the teeth.
"That's the kind of war--civil war--we can't prevent--not yet. No wonder
some of us want quick action and turn into I.W.Ws. Of course they're fools,
just poor boobs, to think they can win out that way, but you can't blame
'em. Lord, if we only _could_ move a little faster. If Marx had been a
good prophet we'd have the socialized state to-day. Things didn't turn out
according to Hoyle. Lots of the proletariat ain't proletariat any longer,
instead of overrunning the earth; and in place of a handful of great
capitalists to fight we've a few hundred thousand little capitalists, or
good wage earners with white collars on, that have about as much use for
socialism as they have for man-eating tigers.
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